DRAMA WITHOUT ACTING BY DUMB ACTORS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20104, 24 March 1928, Page 15 (Supplement)

DRAMA WITHOUT ACTING BY DUMB ACTORS

NEW YIELD FOR 'HE CAMERA The following article by the wellknown author of “The Sentimental Bloke” appeared in the Melbourne Herald, it is based on the wonder picture “Chang,” produced by Paramount. In a moving picture that has recently come to Australia and was shuwn recently at a private screening, a new phase has been revealed in the art of cinematography. It. may almost be said that a new page has been written in the history of the film and that the moving picture camera has at last found its true field. “Chang.” a simple and absorbing picture of jungle life in Siam, has in it all the drama, all the tense situations, the glamour, the tragedy and the humour of a laboriously manufactured studio picture. Yet in the whole of it there is little or no conscious acting. Hitherto the art of the moving picture has been more or less interposed upon that of the : peaking stage. By. an elaborate system of pantomime, actors seek to convey what can be much more adequately conveyed upon the stage. But in a picture such as “Chang.” words are superfluous, and it is a cruelly eloquent comment on the “art” of the moving picture actor to say that Bimbo, the monkey comedian in this picture, can, by a piece i effortless acting, evoke gales of laugh ter. Indeed, Mr Bimbo may be cited as one of the new .stars of the screen. If here and there he overacts a little it is due to natural exuberance and to no conscious effort to win a laugh. MrWalter Buffalo, who plays the part of th e heavy tragedian, acts with a restraint that might well be copied in Hollywood, and Mr Tiger, the villain of the piece registers hate, malice, ferocity, and baffled rage without one false note.

The few humans in the picture, native Siamese, are, in movement and expression, so perfectly natural that n<» hint of acting i.s conveyed. The one woman in the film in expressing such emotions as fear, contentment, surprise smoothly and with such little apparent effort might well be the envy and despair of many a Hollywood star. All of which seems to indicate that much effort has been wasted hitherto in attempts to produce the perfect ‘movie’ artist“Chang.” as a spectacle and as a drama, lacks nothing that may be found in the almost stupendous super film. There is one almost unbelievably vivid “shot” of a tiger drinking; others of bears at play, of pythons gliding through the jungle growth, of leopards seeking prey, and a tremendous spectacle of a huge herd of elephants bent upon ruthless destruction.

And behind it. all is the ever present menace of the wild, of man’s grim and never-ceasing struggle with the unconquerable jungle, of his cunning and resource pitted against blind ferocity and the will of all wild things to live and to increase.

As such, “Chang” is an epic story of man’s struggle with the primitive. Having once been told, it can hardly be repeated; but, knowing the moving picture mind, one may. look for an early outcrop of imitations, faked and otherwise.

“Chang’’ has already been release* in Melbourne and will be seen in Nev Zealand and in every state of Austra lia during the present year.